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Boaties warned to stay safe

North Queensland residents are being urged to carry out safety checks on their boats before they head out on the water over the Christmas break.

Emergency Management Queensland says the most common mistake people make is not keeping up regular maintenance on their boat motors.

Regional director Warren Bridson says everyone needs to take extra care out on the water during the busiest time of year.

"The majority of people do the right thing - they do all of the right actions before they leave, they notify people where they're going, when they're due to return, but there's always a number of people who fail to do that and they are the ones generally who have to call on emergency services," he said.

"It could be in the middle of the night or in the middle of very bad weather to actually rescue them where some pre-plan preparations before they left could have avoided that."

He says people need to carry essential safety items such as an EPIRB, or radio distress beacon, and also let others know about the course of their journey.

"All of our rescues, if we can possibly avoid them, should be avoided - we don't want to put our emergency service people and our state of emergency service volunteers into harm's way or into bad weather or into unsafe situations to rescue people who should not have got themselves into that position in the first place," he said.